Virtual Life Addiction – The Dangers of Living Online

Did you know that many of us pass most of our time surfing the net while reality fades away? 

Can Virtual Life create addiction? How do we define REALITY?

Some may claim that something, to be real, should have a physical or tangible connotation in its existence. 

The hard truth is that this is only one of the possible explanations of our world. 

Some cultures think that daytime and dreams do not differ on the “reality plan” in anyway. It may appear quite awkward to think about a world where your dreams, such a virtual dimension, are comparable to the rest of your experience thru life. 

In the western world we would never confuse virtual life with real, right? But would you ever say that the internet is not real?

Virtual Life – the psychology of the net:

Since the birth of the World Wide Web as we know it today our daily experiences changed gradually. Year by year our lives began to modify and we started to spend more and more time on the net while the web life itself changed at an even higher pace. 

With the advent of the major social networks such as Facebook in 2004, our lives changed forever. Once again, since what was already intangible in our daily reality was now substituted by a virtual life surrogate. Today, social life is deeply influenced by the world of social networks both at a psychological level and sometimes also on the linguistic level.

Human social networks and interpersonal relations were being displaced on software-based platforms that only emulate reality. If someone had to bet on the outcome of this social network idea almost nobody would say that social interpersonal interactions would be ever replaced by surrogates: websites and applications. The reality of numbers proves differently.

Virtual Life – numbers, privacy and power:

If we had to define reality today, even before the COVID pandemic, it would be impossible not to cite the importance of the net. Especially social networks. Various statistics show that the average user can spend up to 6 hours a day on the net. 

This data results to be shocking if compared to the remaining lucid hours we have in a day. Keep note that this is only the average. 

Some users in certain parts of the world can spend much more time surfing the net. This depends from a wide variety of factors. 

The “wear social” website proves that in 2018, the total penetration summed by the hours spent on social networks resulted in an incredible ONE BILLION YEARS ON THE NET.

With such an amazing cumulative time spent in the virtual world, what do you think will happen to our species in the near future? Keeping note that every year there is a 30% growth of the total web penetration, we will soon all be connected. 

Will this be the total loss of our privacy? And maybe of our dreams?

Andrea Silvestri

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